Caleb Carr - The Angel Of Darkness

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be any help with your investigation.”

The Doctor paused a second before answering. “Oh, but you have been, Mrs. Hunter. You have been.” He took a step toward her-and she took a step back, for the first time looking like she wasn’t in complete control of the situation. “Our visit has been very illuminating. And we shall continue our work. Rest-no- be assured of that.”

Finally he turned and got back into the calash. As he did, I saw Nurse Hunter spin on her heel, a lethal look coming into her face, and then charge through her front door, which she closed with a slam.

Frederick was by now fairly calm, but it wouldn’t have taken much to set him off again; so I didn’t give him the reins as a way of telling him to move, just clicked my tongue and let him set a pace of his own choosing, knowing that such freedom would work the last of the spook out of him. For the rest of us, however, that job would be a good piece more difficult. In the space of maybe ten minutes, an awful lot had happened, though none of us yet knew just how much; nor was any of us in a condition to launch into anything more than a brief recounting of the facts, so harrowing had our various sets of experiences been.

The first real order of business, as we crossed over Hudson Street and out of Duster territory, was a more practical affair: to make sure that the blows Cyrus had taken were not serious. Because of the great affection everyone had for the man, this turned out to be an effective and calming distraction. Cyrus and Mr. Moore switched places in the carriage-Mr. Moore joining me up top-so that the Doctor could give Cyrus’s ribs and chest a quick examination while the others anxiously asked him how he felt. He was bruised, all right, but unbroken, thanks to the enormous amounts of muscle that protected his bones. He’d been damned lucky-all of us out on the street had been, really, given who we’d been dealing with. As for what possible interest Ding Dong and the Hudson Dusters could have had in Elspeth Hunter or her house, that was, of course, only one of the hundred questions what had appeared unexpectedly, like ghouls, during our brief stop at Bethune Street; and it was quickly decided by the adults that they needed strong drink and perhaps some food in order to start sifting through it all. The pleasant morning had turned into a fine afternoon, with a cool north wind keeping temperatures in the low seventies. Given these conditions, we determined to make once again for the safe, inviting atmosphere of the outdoor terrace at the Café Lafayette, in order to digest some lunch along with our exploits.

By the time we entered the Lafayette and got to our table on the greenery-covered terrace, we’d all recovered enough to start smiling and even laughing a little at what we’d been through.

“Well!” Miss Howard said with a big, astonished sigh, as she sat and took a menu from our waiter. “I hate to be the one to start asking stupid questions, but if Ana Linares isn’t in Nurse Hunter’s house, where in the world is she?”

“I don’t know,” Marcus answered, “but between us we covered every inch of every floor of that place-”

“Including the basement,” Lucius threw in, scanning his menu.

“-and there was no sign of a baby.” Marcus let his head rest on one hand in bewildered weariness. “No sign at all.”

“The only thing I can suggest,” Mr. Moore said, grabbing at the wine list, “given what happened to the three of you on the street, is that the Dusters are in on it, and they’ve got her somewhere.”

I’d sat down on the floor and started to crawl in amongst some bushy greenery what ran along the iron rail at the edge of the terrace (the good-natured waiters generally let me do that); but Mr. Moore’s words made me pause. “The Dusters?” I said. “In on this kind of thing?”

“Why not?” Mr. Moore asked. “You think they’re above kidnapping, Stevie?”

I felt a little out of my place, saying anything more, and glanced at the Doctor for reassurance; but he was only staring hard at the surface of the table. “Well,” I answered uncertainly. “No, not above it, exactly… just-well-too stupid , really. Or too crazy.”

Lucius nodded a couple of times. “Stevie has a point. Organization and plotting aren’t the Dusters’ strong points. That’s why the other gangs leave them alone: because they don’t control any operations that conflict with anyone else’s or that another group would want to take over. They’re blowers and thugs-they don’t go planning kidnappings and blackmail.”

The Doctor spoke firmly without looking up. “The child is in that woman’s house. I would stake everything on it.”

Mr. Moore hissed. “Kreizler, you were there-she let us go through the whole damned joint.”

“And?” Miss Howard asked.

“And, the only other person who lives there is her husband. He’s got to be fifteen years older than her, and he’s a semi-invalid. Wounded in the Civil War when he was young, apparently, and never really recovered.”

“He recovered,” the Doctor said, a bit testily. “Or at least his wounds did. What the war left him with was an addiction to opiates.”

Marcus looked puzzled. “But he’s bedridden. And his wife said that he-”

“That woman couldn’t utter a true word if her life depended on it,” the Doctor shot back. “As for his being bedridden, had I been jabbed as full of morphine as he has, I should be bedridden, too. Didn’t you note the marks on his arms and the odor in the bedroom?”

“Yes,” Lucius said, getting an annoyed glance from his brother for his trouble. “Well, it was all perfectly plain, Marcus-the man’s been jabbing morphine for years.”

“With, I don’t doubt, the help of his wife,” Dr. Kreizler added. “The good Nurse Hunter.”

“What about her?” Miss Howard asked. “What was she like when you got inside? Because I have to say, she played you all like so many piano keys when you were on the steps.”

The others looked embarrassed at that, but the Doctor lost his scowl and laughed once. “True, Sara! I knew it was happening, yet even I couldn’t stop it initially.”

“So how does she manage it?” Miss Howard pressed. “What was her style, once she had you in her lair?”

“Well-I’ll just tell you this-” Mr. Moore set both the wine list and his menu aside, ready to order his food and drink but looking, despite his outwardly certain tone and manner, a trifle unsure of what he was about to say. “I know you hate it when men clean their language up in your presence, Sara, so I’ll put it to you straight: I couldn’t tell whether that woman wanted to fuck me or kill me.”

At that Lucius spat some water he’d been sipping clear across to the exterior wall of the restaurant, where it hit the bricks above a table that was, fortunately, empty. Everyone broke into deep laughter, and when the waiter came it proved no easy job for him to get coherent orders out of our group. Eventually the waiter started laughing, too, without knowing why, and when he went back to the kitchen he was still going.

“My God, John,” Miss Howard said, trying to calm herself. “I know I asked you all to be candid around me, but-”

“Ah, now,” the Doctor said, defending Mr. Moore. “You can’t have it both ways, my dear Sara. Either you receive it straight from John’s shoulder, or you don’t.” The still chuckling Doctor put a hand on Mr. Moore’s back. “Your talents really are wasted at the Times , Moore. A statement as colorful and unprintable as it is accurate. Elspeth Hunter is an unending string of seeming paradoxes-some of them, unquestionably, possessing deadly dimensions.”